on a lark

[alicornucopia]

She combs and combs the world aside and there is another world, just ahead, and she steps in.

The combed-away hole closes behind her. She puts her comb in her pocket.

Thanjen (Unbitwise)

Blueberry (kappa)

Hivers (Rockeye)

Comments

[wind_on_my_face]

“I have pigments for my glass, to make it white or other colors. I have more than a little bit of metal — mostly aluminum, some copper, little bits of other things.”

He points at the thing over their head. “Silver for the mirror, aluminum and glass in the engine.”

“And I have some plastic, which is good for small flexible things. But since you included my body in that list, I assume you meant to ask about my entire kortarem, not just stuff that's suitable to be reshaped. I also have food and water, and my computer and radio, of course. Soap. Odds and ends.”

[alicornucopia]

"You don't make your food bite-sized?"

[wind_on_my_face]

“Sorry, I don't know what you mean. My food is in whatever size that kind of food comes in. I could split it into bite-size pieces, but there's no particular reason to and that might make some of it spoil faster.”

[alicornucopia]

"I mean, if you have all your food claimed then you could cut it up without needing a knife. When you were about to cook it. Couldn't you?"

[wind_on_my_face]

“Oh, yes, you can do that.”

[alicornucopia]

"But it seems to take a long time to claim things so maybe you don't do it every time you eat."

[wind_on_my_face]

“No, but usually I claim everything I carry with me on trips like this so I can keep it from getting damaged if I get adventurous, and find where it is if I were somehow to lose it, and so on.”

[alicornucopia]

"That makes sense."

Beach. Sand. She looks at the sand, scoops up a handful, looks at it patiently.

[wind_on_my_face]

“It'll be easier if we turn it into glass first; sand is more complicated because it's in separate pieces.”

The bowl over their heads stops providing shade. Now it's turned sideways, and the mirrored concave side is concentrating a lot of sunlight on a patch of clean sand well away from both of them.

[alicornucopia]

"Oh, I thought you turned it into glass with the magic thing."

[wind_on_my_face]

“The — magic — thing?”

[alicornucopia]

"The thing you're teaching me to do?"

[wind_on_my_face]

(Fine. This is not the time to get into an argument about words. If she wants to call it magic, she can call it magic until she has access to the collected knowledge of humanity rather than some strange censored version.)

“All right. You could claim the sand and then reshape it into glass, but that would take longer because instead of just glass, you have sand grains with air and dirt between them.”

The mirror is moving its focus along the sand, gradually adding on to the edges of a disk of fused sand. It's not exactly window glass, but at least it's melted smooth on the top.

[alicornucopia]

"The glass you're making will take a while to cool off, though, won't it?"

[wind_on_my_face]

“Yes, but you don't need to touch it with your hand, just touch it with the glass you already have, and once you are able to reshape it, you can cool it down quickly.”

[alicornucopia]

"Oh. Okay."

[wind_on_my_face]

After a few minutes he puts the mirror back over their heads, and waits for the molten spot to cool down closer to the temperature of the rest.

“Take your glass and just poke the mess somewhere. Claim all the fused part, don't worry about anything that isn't easy; it'll break off.”

[alicornucopia]

She mushes her glass into a long stick and then pokes the melty spot.

[wind_on_my_face]

“Now that you have all of that glass, split the stick before where it gets hot and take back your original glass. You'll use that for an anchor point, so hang onto it or wrap it around you or stand on it.”

[alicornucopia]

She does as he suggests and turns it into a bracelet.

[wind_on_my_face]

“Forcepattern the bracelet and the hot glass so the hot glass will stay exactly as far away from you as it is now. Now just reshape it into a wide, thin ribbon, thin like paper, which will push itself up into the air away from the hot pool as you make it, and necessarily curve over this way.”

He gestures suggesting a semicircular arc over their heads.

“By the time it reaches the ground on the other side, it should have been cooled enough by the air that you can touch it.”

[alicornucopia]

The hot glass wobbles up, snakelike, flattens out, arcs over.

[wind_on_my_face]

“Looks good.”

[alicornucopia]

Nod, nod.

[wind_on_my_face]

It takes another minute or so to get it all moved, but eventually the glass is all piled up over there like a plate of inedible noodles. Blue-tinted, giant noodles.

He walks over and touches it with a glass-covered hand (his glass, which is colorless), and then a bare one. She can feel his hand.

“All cooled off. You've got a couple kilograms of glass there, I think. You can do a lot with that if you don't actually need solid thickness in particular.”